"Bringing Home rain" : A film on rainwater harvesting in Kannada and Tamil

The above video shows young girls at play and answering questions on rainwater harvesting (Kannada). In this village 40 rainwater tanks of 2500 litre capacity is being built by a unique village to village partnership. Kuruburakunte, the first village has all houses with rainwater tanks. Built during a time of crisis when water was being supplied by tankers, the supplemental water and the storage provision created for each household was a big help to families.

Bringing home rain (Kannada with English subtitles, see an excerpt below, write to portal@arghyam.org for the full film) - - captured the benefits rainwater harvesting had brought to Kuruburakunte.

When the villagers of Arjunabetahalli - 50 kms away- heard about the solution and also experienced water problems they went in a bus to see what rainwater harvesting was all about . They interacted with the villagers and came back convinced that this was something they could do. Ramakrishnappa from the first village came with two masons to the second village. He stays there in the house of various families and sometimes in the school and is helping build 40 rainwater tanks in the second village for those families who need it the most. The funds come from a holiday resort nearby. The resort 'Shreyas' provides 4 bags of cement, 300 bricks and a half tractor of sand. The rest of the cost is borne by the family and in one case two large underground tanks have been built by the families with their own monies. Bringing Home Rain - supported by Arghyam and directed by Sushma Veerappa- has now been shot in Tamil language also (click below for part 1, part 2 is also on YouTube).

While in the Kannada version the national award winning actress Tara had acted, in the Tamil version another national award winning actress Revathi has acted and both have done this pro bono. With such cooperation rainwater harvesting will reach many more villages which need such support. We hope that 2008 the Year of sanitation will see rainwater harvesting and ecological sanitation systems to come to many more such villages.